EXCLUSIVE: Emails show Yale profs cancel class for Kavanaugh hearing

More than a dozen Yale Law School professors canceled or rescheduled classes on Monday because of the Judge Brett Kavanaugh hearing.

Students requested that professors cancel classes to allow them to protest the hearing in Washington, D.C. and on campus.

One student tweeted that the school, Kavanaugh's alma mater, is complicit in sexual harassment because the dean did not publicly oppose Kavanaugh's nomination.

Professors at Yale Law School canceled classes Monday to allow students to protest the Judge Brett Kavanaugh hearing, according to emails obtained exclusively by Campus Reform.

Dana Bolger, a Yale Law School student and senior editor at Feministing, posted a series of tweets regarding the cancelations. According to screenshots of emails she posted to Twitter, Professor James Forman Jr. and at least four other Yale Law School professors canceled classes on Monday.

“It effectively encourages students to participate in the protests and penalizes those who choose not to by disrupting the class schedule."

Kavanaugh, President Donald Trump's Supreme Court justice nominee, is a Yale Law School alumnus.

Additional emails obtained exclusively by Campus Reform show that as many as 20 Yale Law School faculty members canceled or rescheduled up to 31 classes on Monday because of the Kavanaugh hearing.

Yale Law School spokeswoman Debra Kroszer told Campus Reform on Monday that "Yale Law School did not cancel all classes," but, she added, "many faculty members chose to reschedule or cancel their own classes today. And some held classes as usual."

“While I respect the right of the students protesting to make their voices heard, I disagree with professors’ decisions to cancel classes at the request of those protesters,” Emily Hall, a student at Yale Law school, told Campus Reform in a statement. “It effectively encourages students to participate in the protests and penalizes those who choose not to by disrupting the class schedule," Hall added.

In another tweet, Bolger states that on September 21, “YLS faculty demanded fair process on Kavanaugh sexual assault allegations, [but the] @YaleLawSch dean chose to remind us that she ‘cannot take a position for or against a nominee.'” Bolger then added that the YLS dean, “didn't bother her [a] few months ago when she issued [a] press release fawning over his nomination.”

In a September 21 open letter to the Senate Judiciary Committee, Yale Law School faculty stated in part that “the confirmation process must always be conducted, and appointments made, in a manner that gives Americans reason to trust the Supreme Court.”

“Some questions are so fundamental to judicial integrity that the Senate cannot rush past them without undermining the public’s confidence in the Court. This is particularly so for an appointment that will yield a deciding vote on women’s rights and myriad other questions of immense consequence in American lives.”

According to a tweet from Bolger, the “Yale Law School students and alums will be holding a press conference TODAY AT 3:15PM in the Kennedy Caucus Room in Russell [Senate Office Building]- where Anita Hill hearings were held.”

Students back on campus at Yale hosted a sit-in Monday morning to "protest both the nomination of Judge Kavanaugh, this school's implicit endorsement of him, and our administration's complicity in widespread sexual harassment in the legal profession," according to an email obtained by Campus Reform.

Campus Reform reached out to Bolger, Forman, and Wishnie for comment but did not hear back by publishing time. If and when a response is received the article will be updated.

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